Christa Luding-Rothenburger is the only athlete to ever win medals in both Winter and Summer Games in the same year.

The Torch

In the torch relay that begins at the ruins of the Temple of Hera in Olympia and ends at the site of the Games, runners do not pass the same torch; only the flame is passed on to the next torchbearer. Each runner is allowed to keep their torch.

In 2014, one leg of the torch relay took place in space as two Russian cosmonauts carried the torch outside the International Space Station, some 200 miles above Earth.

The Shea Family of Lake Placid, New York, is the first to produce three generations of Olympians. Father Jack, 91, was a double-gold medalist in speed skating, son Jim, Sr., was a U.S. ski team member at the 1964 Innsbruck Games, and in 2002 grandson Jim, Jr., won a gold medal in skeleton.

The 1956 Winter Games in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, were the first to be televised. The 1968 Games in Grenoble, France, were the first to be broadcast in color.

Man-made snow was used in the Olympics for the first time at the 1980 Games in Lake Placid.

Computers were first used to tabulate results at the 1960 Games in Squaw Valley, California.

American Jennison Heaton won the first skeleton gold medal in 1928, beating his brother John, who took the silver, by one second. John Heaton, at age 39, went on to win the silver again in 1948, finishing second to Italy's Nino Bibbia. American Jim Shea, Jr., won the men's gold in the 2002 return of the sport to the Olympics. The 2002 Salt Lake City Games also witnessed the debut of women's skeleton.

At the 2006 Turin Olympics, American Shani Davis became the first African-American athlete to win gold in an individual event, the 1,000 m. He also took home silver in the 1,500 m event. Davis is the tallest American speed skater, standing at 6'2" tall.

American skier Lindsey Vonn was awarded a cow by local dairy farmers for her World Cup win in Val D'Isere, France, in 2005. She had a choice between the cow or an additional $1,200 in prize money. She went with the cow.

The oldest man to receive a Winter Olympics medal is 83-year-old Anders Haugen. The Norwegian-American actually received his ski jump bronze medal 50 years after he competed in 1924 when a scoring error was discovered in 1974.

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